Description:
ACPSEM Summer School 2023: MRI and MR Linacs
3-5 November 2023, Christchurch, New Zealand
  
This year’s ACPSEM Summer School will be jointly hosted by St George’s Cancer Care Centre and Christchurch Hospital.
The topic this year is MRI and MR-linacs, with a mixture of lectures provided by experienced professionals working in the field, supported by hands on practical sessions on an MR-linac (thanks to St George’s Cancer Care Centre) and an MRI scanner (thanks to Pacific Radiology Group), and additional expert-led discussion sessions. There will also be additional content based around PET NEMA testing for Nuclear Medicine registrars as we have the opportunity to access all NEMA test phantoms in a hands on practical session, to complete their programme. We are very lucky to have arranged a line-up of some excellent speakers (see section below) who will deliver lectures that aim to provide a foundation of knowledge on each subject, but with a focus on allowing the presenters to share their real-world experiences and the practical applications of the material. All sessions are designed to support the TEAP DIMP (DR and NM) and ROMP curriculums and guidance around appropriate TEAP sign offs subsequent to the summer school will be provided to registrars and their supervisors.
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Content and Schedule Outline
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Day 1 Lectures
Times: 8:30 am – 5:30 pm
Venue: Manawa building, Christchurch Hospital, 276 Antigua Street, Christchurch
The programme on the first day will be mostly combined for all attendees and consist of lectures designed to build a strong foundation of understanding of MRI: the basics of image formation, MRI safety and image quality. There will also be a session on the applications of MRI for Oncology. The first day will conclude with choice of an introduction to MRI linacs for ROMPs or advanced MRI safety concepts (for DIMPs).
Day 2 Lectures and Practical sessions, NESIG evening function
Times: 8:30 am – 5:30 pm + evening function
Venue: St George’s Cancer Care Centre, 131 Leinster Road, Strowan
The programme on day two will consist of separate streams for lectures in the morning followed by practical sessions in the afternoon. The ROMP stream will cover MR Linac adaptive therapy and clinical implementation, followed by MR Linac commissioning. The DIMP stream will cover specialised MRI techniques and MRI performance testing, in depth. In place of some practical sessions, NM attendees will have additional lectures on the current NEMA Standards Publication NU 2-2018 Performance Measurements of Positron Emission Tomographs (PET).
Practical sessions will be available for MRI using the Pacific Radiology Group clinical scanner, MR Linac using the St George’s Cancer Care Centre Elekta Unity, with additional practical and expert facilitated discussion sessions on MR linac adaptive therapy, MRI image quality and Oncology case studies, and MRI performance testing and safety. These sessions will be repeated to enable appropriate group sizes and attendees will be assigned to a group, with allocation into practicals depending on their primary specialty.
An evening networking and social function will be hosted by the ACPSEM New and Early Career Special Interest Group (NESIG).
Day 3 Practical Sessions
Times: 9 am – 12:30 pm
Venue: St George’s Cancer Care Centre (DR and RO) 131 Leinster Road, and Christchurch Hospital (NM) 2 Riccarton Avenue
Attendees will have a chance to attend the remaining practical sessions for their specialty. NM attendees will have a practical session on the use of specialised NEMA test phantoms for PET quality assurance.
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Eligibility and Costs
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Attendance is open to all currently enrolled TEAP registrars, with no registration fee.
Other ACPSEM members who are not part of the TEAP programme will also be able to attend the summer school but this will be subject to a registration fee of $800 NZD.
If interest is high and registration levels risk exceeding the capacity of the venues then registration for non-registrars will be closed.
The venue sizes and practicals schedule has been based around the response received in the initial expressions of interest communication circulated by the ACPSEM earlier this year. In the event that registration numbers exceed the safe capacity for some of the practical sessions, video recordings of those sessions will be provided for those who are over capacity, with registrars and those who register early given the priority for in person attendance at all sessions.
Refreshments and meals during the day will be provided for all attendees, but evening meals and accommodation are not included.
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Registration
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Registrations will close September 30th.
Registration for Non - Registrars:
Registration for non-Registrars is $800 NZD (including GST). This does not include travel or accommodation costs.
As the College is not GST registered in New Zealand, invoicing and payment processing will be conducted by The Conference Company, the professional event organisers supporting EPSM 2023.
You must register for Summer School via the ACPSEM website, but your invoice will be sent to you directly from the Conference Company within 5 business days of your registration.
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TEAP Curriculum Links and Sign Offs
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All registrants will be provided with a list of pre-reading to ensure a common foundation of knowledge that enables the material covered within the summer school to be as interesting and clinically relevant as possible.
Follow up work and post-reading recommendations will also be provided for some subjects to help ensure a well-rounded understanding of the subjects is achieved. Some follow up questions to show that understanding is retained, along with some model answers provided to supervisors, will be provided along with guidelines for supervisors of any further recommended work (if relevant) regarding the coverage of the TEAP curriculum for various Learning Outcomes and Elements. This should allow supervisors to sign off registrars for partial or full completion of the following elements (where * indicates only partial sign off is expected):
ROMP Learning Outcomes:
7.2.1 | 7.2.2 | 10.2.1 | 10.2.2 | 10.2.3
DIMP (DR) Learning Outcomes:
1.3.1 | 2.4.1* | 4.6.1 | 4.6.2 | 4.6.3 | 7.1.4 | 7.1.5 | 8.1.1* | 8.1.2* | 8.1.4* | 8.2.1* | 8.2.2* | 9.6.1
DIMP (NM) Learning Outcomes:
1.3.1 | 2.4.1* | 4.6.1 | 7.1.4 | 8.1.1* | 8.1.3 | 8.1.4* | 8.2.1* | 8.2.2*
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CPD and Virtual Availability
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Attendees will be eligible for CPD points under the ACPSEM CPD Program's Category 1: Undertaking Education Activities as attendance at an ACPSEM CPD event.
Material from the Summer School will be recorded and made available at some stage subsequent to the Summer School, with no cost associated for Summer School attendees and current registrars. There will be a fee associated for access to this material for non-registrars. The benefits of in person rather than virtual attendance will be in the ability to ask questions, discuss the material with experts, gain hands on experience with the equipment and network with other Medical Physicists at a similar career stage. |
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Speakers and Invited Experts
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The list of speakers for the summer school is not yet completely finalised, but we can confirm the following people will be present to contribute their knowledge and experience:
Simon Woodings:
Simon is a medical physicist at UMC Utrecht, the Netherlands where, during the last eight years, he has been part of the team contributing to development and clinical implementation with the Unity 1.5 T MR-Linac.
Simon is proud to be registered for clinical practice in Australia and the Netherlands; to have been a Radiotherapy Physics examiner for the Australian college (ACPSEM); to have been Head of Physics for Genesis Cancer Care WA; to have completed his PhD on dosimetry and acceptance testing of the Unity; to see the Unity system implemented in institutes across the world; to coordinate the Utrecht MR-in-RT and MR-Linac course, and; to be developing MR-linac QA guidelines with the AAPM (TG352).
Simon has stated he is also very proud to have been invited to attend EPSM 2023 as a keynote speaker, and to contribute to this year’s Summer School.
Nick Cook is a DIMP and MRSE at Christchurch Hospital, NZ. Nick is originally from the UK with a background in optical image processing and medical device evaluation.
Since coming to NZ, Nick has developed his Diagnostic Physics role including PACS integration, DICOM GSDF QA, general Radiology QA, MRI QA, and more recently as MR Safety Expert.
Nick helps look after 6 MRIs across Canterbury and has recently been appointed as MRSE covering St Georges Unity MRI-linac. Nick was also lead author on the 2023 ACPSEM Position Paper on the safety of MRI-linacs and is a member of the MRI-linac QA sub-group.
Richard Watts:
Richard Watts is an MRI physicist with a broad background in different techniques, including MR angiography, diffusion, perfusion, and functional MRI. He started working with MRI at the Weill-Cornell Medical College, before moving to Christchurch where he taught Medical Imaging at the University of Canterbury from 2003 to 2010. Since then he has worked at the University of Vermont and Yale University, primarily doing neurological research, although with some other more bizarre projects added in for fun. He was the primary physics lead for Philips sites for the $300 million NIH-funded Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. He has more than 100 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, PNAS, JAMA Pediatrics, and Radiology. He has recently returned to Christchurch with his wife, kids, and dog.
Pooja Gohill:
Pooja is a Medical Physicist from the UK who has just completed a one year secondment at St George’s Cancer Care Centre, NZ. Pooja first began working on MR-Linac systems at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust investigating magnetic field correction factors for radiation dosimeters. She has since worked at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust within the imaging team, specialising in pre-treatment MRI and on treatment CBCT imaging.02F02F
Rosie Holmes:
Rosie originally trained in the UK; but over the last seven year in New Zealand she has developed her interests in SABR, imaging and safety. She is now Principal ROMP and MRSO at St George’s Cancer Care Centre with responsibility for the Unity MR-Linac, moving to Christchurch for the role in 2022. Having02Frecently completed the commissioning of New Zealand’s first MR-Linac, and commenced SABR prostate treatments, she is now part of the MDT rolling out adaptive therapy to more tumour sites.
Michael Jameson:
Michael is the chief physicist for GenesisCare in NSW, home to Sydney’s only MR-Linac. Michael is also the chair of the ACPSEM working group on MR Linacs which has recently published position papers on MRL Dosimetry, Safety and workforce issues.
Jarrad Begg:
Jarrad Begg is an ACPSEM certified clinical medical physicist working at the Liverpool and Macarthur Cancer Therapy Centres. Jarrad’s interests include improving quality assurance, ionising radiation dosimetry, and MRI-linacs. He has submitted his PhD thesis investigating the dosimetric properties of a prototype high field parallel MRI-Linac. Jarrad was the lead author on the recently released ACPSEM MRI Linac Dosimetry position paper.
Zoë Moutrie:
Bio to come.
Ian Hansen:
Bio to come.
Sandie Fisher:
Bio to come.
Deborah Carrick:
Deborah Carrick is a Nuclear Medicine medical physicist with over 20 years experience in both general nuclear medicine and PET imaging. She originally trained in the UK, and moved to Australia 10 years ago, where she currently manages the medical physics service at Gold Coast University Hospital. Deb has been a part time ACPSEM DIMP TEAP coordinator for the last 4 years.
Alicia Moggre:
Alicia Moggre is a Senior ROMP working at Christchurch Hospital. Along with routine clinical involvement, she also acts as supervisor for the department’s four ROMP registrars and is involved in supervision of postgraduate student research at the University of Canterbury. In a different role she is also working as half of the New Zealand ROMP TEAP Clinical Training Coordinator/Preceptor and has therefore been tasked with coordinating this year’s Summer School. While not an MRI or MRI linac expert, she is experienced in event management and adult education and is looking forward to coordinating an excellent line up of speakers to teach us all about these topics and help registrars and other interested professionals to achieve their educational goals.
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If you will be travelling to NZ from overseas for Summer School, our EPSM website contains useful information about visa requirements, transport, and other logistics: https://www.epsm.org.au/general-information
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